


a most particular straitness

by cyanides



Category: The Museum of Jurassic Technology, Undisclosed Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-24
Updated: 2020-12-24
Packaged: 2021-03-10 21:28:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,114
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28293828
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cyanides/pseuds/cyanides
Summary: A meeting at the Iguazú Falls, 1936.
Relationships: Madalena Delani & Geoffrey Sonnabend
Comments: 16
Kudos: 13
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	a most particular straitness

**Author's Note:**

  * For [attheborder](https://archiveofourown.org/users/attheborder/gifts).



> Happy Yuletide, attheborder! The Museum of Jurassic Technology is, without exaggeration, my favourite museum in the world, and your request delighted me so much that I decided I had to take a stab at a treat.

When Alonso comes hurrying towards her with the news, Madelena momentarily thinks she must have misheard. "Bees? But why?"

"Not _why_!" Alonso gestures emphatically in the direction of the moored boat. Now that Madalena is looking closer, she can indeed make out a shifting, blurred mass enveloping the boat engine. Her ears pick up the thrum of all those tiny wings, just audible over the boatmen hollering imprecations and advice. "The question is not why, but _how_. How are we to get these creatures out of the engine, and get the boat running? This will throw the whole schedule off, I tell you."

Alonso's shirt collar, so resilient to the humidity and the travails of the tour, is wilting — always a bad sign. Madalena would rather avoid one of the tempests of despair which occur when Alonso encounters the rare obstacle he cannot wrangle. "There isn't much of a schedule from here on," Madalena says reassuringly. "I'm in no hurry to get to Montevideo. Nadia will understand."

"But the ferry—" Alonso begins.

"Alonso," Madalena says, infusing a little more steel into her voice. "We will stay here tonight. It's no trouble. I will let the hotel know."

Alonso grumbles, but capitulates with the speed of someone relieved to have an intractable decision taken out of his hands for once. They agree to meet again at nine the next morning — by which time Alonso insists the bees will have been extracted from the engine, if he has to claw them out with his bare hands — and Madalena turns away from the commotion, discreetly slipping a pin into her hem at an angle. When she awakes and gets dressed, her fingers will instinctively drift across the familiar spots, and no matter how much or how little she recalls of this conversation with Alonso, the slant of the pin will remind her. _Nine o'clock._

But sleep is still some way off, apparently. The hotel manager is eager to oblige, delighted to accommodate the sudden change in Madam Delani's plans, but it will take some time to make up a room for her — would madam care for a stroll in the garden in the meantime? Madalena would.

She wanders across the damp grass, watching the pale moonlight dappling the leaves, and the occasional flicker of a bee — perhaps heading to join its comrades in vexing Alonso and the boatmen. But all that is a distant concern for Madalena. The thunderous roaring of the waterfall is so steady as to be soothing. After years of performing in bustling cities and crowded halls filled with cigar smoke, spending a night somewhere like this is a breath of fresh air, in more ways than one. Perhaps she'll get Alonso to include more stops like this on the next tour.

The solitude is almost as new to her as the quiet. Rudolf was always shepherding her from one place to the next — first with an air of solicitous protectiveness, and then, as the years passed, with the faint petulance of a person clinging to something they both knew was reaching its end. She's asserted herself more with Alonso, but there's still a spark of novelty every time she realizes that her time is truly her own — no one is hovering by her side, questioning if she really remembers the way back to the room. It's only her, wandering through the shroud of mist as dusk settles around her.

Or so she thinks, until a figure looms out of the gloom and she jerks back with a gasp.

"Apologies! My apologies, madam," says the figure, in an unmistakably Chicago accent. Madalena steps closer, and it resolves itself into a portly middle-aged man, mostly nondescript except for his bushy moustache. His suit is well-cut — though drooping a little from the humidity — but it has a scrupulously-mended neatness that suggests it is the only fine one he owns. Probably an academic of some stripe, then.

His face is equally easy to read, as he takes a closer look at Madalena and his expression brightens. "You are the singer! Madalena Deloni!"

"Delani," she corrects him. 

"Delani," he repeats, with a wince of contrition. "My apologies again, madam. Thank you very much for your performance earlier."

Madalena doesn't remember seeing him at the recital, but even apart from her condition, she seldom pays much attention to the audience while performing. All her focus turns inward, navigating through the songs, following the notes one after another like a thread through a maze. It's only after she leaves the stage that Alonso introduces her to anyone she ought to know. She quickly brushes her fingers over her sleeve, but finds no pins; evidently no such introductions were made tonight.

"I'm glad you enjoyed it," she says. "Mister...?"

"Geoffrey Sonnabend," he replies. "Your singing was..." He sweeps his hand through the air, as though reaching for words, but seems to come up short. "...beautiful," he says. "Haunting. I can't describe it."

Madalena has encountered similar sentiments from critics and journalists on both sides of the Atlantic, though usually expressed at significantly greater length. Rudolf hoarded every news clipping in his scrapbooks, and a younger Madalena would occasionally leaf through the pages, savoring the warmth of approbation, even though the words themselves faded from her memory soon after.

"I was surprised by your age," Sonnabend says. Now _that_ she hasn't heard as much of.

It's almost amusing, how quickly and openly his expression melts into dismay as he realizes what he just said. "I mean no offence," Sonnabend says hastily. "I'm no spring chicken myself. It's just — the hotel staff told me there would be a recital of romantic songs, and I was expecting something rather different."

"I'm sorry if you wanted something sprightlier," Madalena says dryly. 

"Not at all!" Sonnabend says with alarm. "I didn't know what I wanted till I heard it. The quality of yearning... The depth of feeling... It felt like you were singing from deep within you. Thank you for that."

The words are clumsy, but every syllable rings with sincerity. Madalena isn't sure how to deal with this degree of earnestness, so she deflects. "Thank you for attending," she says. "And what brings you to the Iguazú Falls, Mr. Sonnabend?"

"Convalescence," Sonnabend says, grimacing. "I'm just getting over a bout of pleurisy, and my doctor and my mother both thought this air would be good for my lungs. I wish I could control my breathing as magnificently as you do."

That's another new one, but Madalena is getting used to him, and simply nods in acknowledgment. Sonnabend is already breezing on to his next thought. "Will you be staying for another day?" he asks hopefully. "The hotel staff said it was a one-night engagement, but..."

"I'm leaving tomorrow morning," Madalena says, and his face falls; she would call it theatrical if it weren't so clearly genuine. "Or I _should_ be. We've been delayed by some..." She pauses, but looking at Sonnabend's open, curious face, she reflects that if anyone might take the tale in stride, it's this man. "Some bees," she says. "In the boat engine."

Sonnabend's face lights up. Madalena wonders if everything has this effect on him. "Bees!" he exclaims. "Now that's an idea. Maybe I should look into bees next. I wonder what makes them gravitate to engines. Perhaps some sort of anamnesic nostalgia for the honeycomb—"

"They might simply be attracted to the warmth," says Madalena. "I don't think it happens that often, in any case."

"I defer to you," Sonnabend says. "You've seen far more of the world than I have."

It's an odd sensation, Madalena reflects — sifting for the barb that _should_ be lurking under the words, but never turning up anything of the sort. "What did you mean about looking into bees next?" she asks instead.

"I used to study carp," Sonnabend replies. So she was right about the academia, after all. "I spent several years conducting research on their memory pathways."

A jolt runs down Madalena's spine.

Sonnabend continues, apparently without noticing. "But the results weren't especially fruitful, even before my nervous breakdown. I doubt I'll be able to secure any funding to continue that project after I return."

His voice when he says "nervous breakdown" is as matter-of-fact as when he was talking about his pleurisy. Once again, Madalena is uncertain how to approach this. He clearly isn't fishing for consolation, but somehow, that makes her want to extend it all the more. "I'm sorry to hear that," she says, as neutrally as she can. "Everyone hits a slump sometimes."

"And perhaps some of us never leave it," Sonnabend says, still in that same offhand tone — and then his attention is snagged by something darting past in the misty air. "A bee!" he says. "Look, Madam Delani, it's one of your companions."

Madalena's gaze follows his pointing finger, and she spots not just one but a whole cluster of small silhouettes bobbing and weaving through the air. Unlike the ones she glimpsed earlier, these don't seem to be headed anywhere in particular — they hover among the bushes, occasionally winging in small, tight circles, but never straying far. They're like an attentive audience, waiting for something Madalena can't imagine.

"People say bees are a manifestation of the artist's muse," Sonnabend says. "They flocked around Plato's lips when he spoke. I'm sure they appreciated your performance as well."

Plato can keep the bees, in Madalena's opinion, but she only makes a noise of vague assent.

"Perhaps they also know you're about to leave," Sonnabend says. 

Madalena lets out a sharp little laugh; she can't help it. Sonnabend doesn't seem affronted. "And they're trying to stop me?"

"Not necessarily," Sonnabend says meditatively, apparently oblivious to the bite of irony in her voice. "They might just be mourning your departure, in their own way. Have you ever known that someone — a person close to you — was going to leave?"

Of course she has. The final time the Carvokka household door thudded shut behind her. Those last few months of marriage when the air thickened, growing dense with stale feeling and sour resentment, whenever Rudolf entered the room. But that's all about paying attention and recognizing cues, having a weather eye for disappointment, like a sailor spotting the tinge of an impending storm on the horizon. It's nothing like whatever absurdity Sonnabend is about to utter. 

Still, his thoughtful expression as he turns to look at her, the tentative light of anticipation in his eyes as he awaits her response — there's something delicate that she's reluctant to crush.

"Of course," is all she says.

His gaze flares with startled joy. "Oh! Well — thank you. For agreeing." He hesitates. "That's... To tell the truth, I've been thinking about that sort of thing for a while. Premonitions. Déjà vu. I said that I hadn't gotten any results from my carp research, but that isn't exactly true. That project got me to consider the underlying nature of memory — not just how it functions in certain species, but as a universal experience."

A tremor runs through Madalena again, like a crystal being struck.

There are instants in Madalena's life which she intuitively knows are important. The hush that falls across a music hall just before a career-defining performance. Letting a single note ring out, longer than she should be able to, far longer than she ever has before, feeling the air tremble with it, knowing that she will never match this again. Madalena has learnt to let instinct guide her in these moments, the way her hands automatically glide over patterns of pins to piece together fragments of memory. This is one such moment.

She nods, her throat dry.

"I think," Sonnabend says slowly, "that there are different types of memory, but not the way people usually think about it. Memory, and forgetting, and déjà vu — what if they're all different manifestations of the same thing? Like different facets of a single prism. The prism known as experience. People put so much stock in their memory, we erect wards against forgetfulness, but in actuality we are constantly in the midst of forgetting—" His voice has been rising sharply, and now it catches and he breaks off into coughing, a harsh and rattling sound that abruptly reminds Madalena of the chilly night air. She reaches out, but he hastily waves her away.

"I'm sorry," Sonnabend says, once he's taken a few deep breaths; his face is less flushed now, but it's creased in a rictus of what seems to be belated self-consciousness. He tugs awkwardly at his quivering moustache. "I shouldn't be rambling on like this about some half-baked notions — really, I've barely had the chance to start putting them into words. I come across much more cogently in writing." He scuffs his shoe against the ground — an incongruously schoolboy-like gesture, heedless of the dirt that smears across the leather — and then harrumphs. "Please don't think poorly of these ideas, simply because I'm not doing them justice right now. I promise they will be much better elaborated when written down." He steals an abashed glance at her, and then quickly looks away.

There's a warmth unfurling in Madalena's heart; it feels perilously close to affection. "It's alright," she says. "Go on."

Sonnabend darts another glance at her, surprised but grateful. "Well," he says. "In this theory — I know it's a stretch to call it a theory right now, but if you'll allow me that liberty — there is nothing but experience and the forgetting of that experience. All memory is an illusion, destined to ultimately vanish into oblivion. This also means that everything we associate with memory — recent memories, more distant memories, amnesia, and even phenomena such as premonitions — they all stem from the same underlying mechanism. Perhaps that means we could induce them all through the same method. If we found some way to reliably access and retrieve memory—"

Sonnabend is speaking rapidly again, his embarrassment shed like water. He is no longer looking at Madalena, or indeed at anything in particular; his eyes are bright but unfocused, as though he's straining to peer through a fog even deeper than the mist around them. Madalena recognizes that cast of expression — of fumbling within one's own mind like a darkened room, grasping for something one has never seen or felt, but knows is there. Following the notes or words wherever they might lead, waiting for the moment they all fall into place and truth flows out of one's mouth like light.

"I think I know what you mean," Madalena says; Sonnabend jerks as though emerging from a trance, and stares at her, eyes still dazed. "I — I have a poor memory, myself."

"Poor memory" — those were the words wrapped delicately around it by her parents, then passed on to Rudolf, and repeated apologetically to schoolteachers and critics and impresarios over the years. Madalena herself was told to speak of it as little as possible, lest it make its way to one of the less discreet reporters, and thence into public record.

Sonnabend is still looking at her, head cocked curiously.

"I have trouble forming memories," Madalena blurts, terse both from nervousness and irritation at her own nervousness. "So I use pins to keep track. I put them in my clothes." She extends her wrist towards him, and then, remembering too late that she has no pins in her sleeve, she brusquely twitches the hem of her skirt. She isn't sure if Sonnabend can see the flash of the pins in the dim light.

If he can't, it doesn't seem to bother him. "Pins!" he says, beaming. "Of course. That makes sense. It's said that pins acquire the qualities associated with their owners. Perhaps they can accrete and anchor experiences too, like a magnetic charge, and then they release these experiences when called upon. There was a scholar, I can't recall the name right now, who held that everything, emotions and movements and chemical reactions, was due to magnetic forces — so why not memories as well? Yes! Madam Delani, you are a genius." He dips a bow to her.

Madalena doesn't feel like a genius. But she has never felt like _this_ either. Her pulse is galloping, mingling with the roar of the waterfall in her ears. Every sensation feels heightened — the heady scent of the damp air, the pale glow of the moonlight limning every surface. Some energy is thrumming through her body, drawing every nerve taut and alert; it's as though she is suffused with the magnetic force Sonnabend is talking about.

"Kircher! Athanasius Kircher," Sonnabend is saying excitedly. "It was he who wrote about magnetism. He also proposed that perception — I think it was perception, or perhaps materiality — could be best represented by a cone, narrowing from the divine to the gross. Cones... that might be it, there's something there, maybe a cone—"

Madalena shakes her head. "Never mind that," she says urgently; Sonnabend shies like a startled horse. "What was that you said earlier? About — about retrieving memory?"

"Oh, yes," Sonnabend says, blinking. "If all phenomena we classify as memory, or related to memory, issue from the same source — the way we process experience — then maybe all of them could be induced through the same method. But that—"

Words of Madalena's own are welling up within her, teeming between her teeth; she can tell she's on the cusp of something, bigger than ever before. She opens her lips and lets it all spill forth.

"We _have_ that method," Madalena says. "The pins. If the pins work as you say — if they really are charged with these magnetic forces — maybe they don't just _store_ memories. Maybe it runs both ways. The pins work for small reminders, bringing back little memories — so what if they work for more than that? Causing forgetfulness." She swallows. "Reversing it."

"That would make sense," Sonnabend murmurs. "If the pins let us manipulate what we call 'memory', on a small scale, then — following this reasoning — we might use them to access more significant experiences, located even further back. And perhaps... even further in the future. Premonitions, and so forth. It should be a matter of tapping into the common mechanism." He nervously plucks at his moustache. "But without spending more time developing the classification... This is all theoretical—"

"It's not theoretical to _me_ ," Madalena bursts out.

She doesn't know what is showing on her face, but Sonnabend's expression falls open, and his hand shifts, as though he is about to take hers but then thinks better of it. She's almost afraid to meet his eyes, but when she finally does, they are soft not with pity, but with understanding.

"Of course," he says. "We should try."

Madalena loses track of how things progresses after that — and she suspects that it's less due to her condition than because of how the conversation meanders and swirls with the hallucinatory logic of a dream. From then on, the night seems to pass in flashes of images, leaping forward like a zoetrope — huddling in the bushes with Sonnabend for some reason, bees brushing soft as petals against their faces; arguing with Sonnabend, gesticulating sharply, and then apologizing for almost jabbing him with a pin; both of them doubling over in peals of laughter at something one of them just said, dashing tears of undignified mirth from their eyes.

When everything finally scrolls back into place, the edges of the sky are pearly with dawn. Madalena is holding two pins like dowsing rods, in fingers numb from cold. Her legs are cramping. She recalls that this was in large part her idea, but the absurdity of the situation is starting to seep in, along with the dew stains on her skirt.

"Close your eyes," Sonnabend says. He's crouched on the ground with her, heedless of the puddle soaking his trousers. He's shivering slightly, and lets out a hacking cough, but his eyes are alight. "Just like we said — feel the current. Let it guide the pins. Go with the current, not against it."

He watches her with absolute faith; in the face of that, there's nothing she can do but close her eyes and concentrate on the pins, and, as foolish as it's starting to seem, try to feel the current.

There's no warning click. She feels no snag in the air, no tug on the pins. But one moment she's kneeling in the garden, and the next she's slamming against metal, feeling the horrible weightless lurch of a vehicle skidding. The air rings with the shattering of glass. Lightning blazes bright between her temples, followed by the copper taste of blood in her mouth. But there's no pain, nothing but an electric thrill that scours through her body and leaves every nerve singing.

Her eyes jerk open. She's fallen backwards on the wet earth of the garden, and Sonnabend is leaning anxiously over her. Every muscle in her body is trembling. Her mouth is dry again, and tastes of nothing more than a stray stalk of grass. She spits it out. 

"Are you alright?" Sonnabend asks anxiously, helping her to her feet. 

"I did it," Madalena croaks. She notices that the pins are still clutched in her nerveless grip. "It worked. I saw... something."

Sonnabend's hand tightens around hers. "Was it — a memory?"

"No," Madalena says, still hoarse. "I didn't choose it — what I saw. It was a — a premonition. It hasn't happened yet." She feels this certainty deep in her bones, though she can't explain it, any more than a compass could explain the way it knows how to point north.

But Sonnabend doesn't ask her for an explanation. "I'm sorry," he says instead, dolefully. "I was hoping for a solution too—"

"Oh, no," Madalena says, shaking her head with a vehemence that startles herself. "No. There's no solution. Maybe there's nothing to be fixed." She wipes the pins on her sleeve, and slides them back into the fabric of her skirt. "I've lived with this for long enough. I know how to manage it."

Sonnabend furrows his brow. "Then what did you want?"

"I think I just... wanted to know," Madalena says slowly. "I wanted to see _beyond_ , just for a moment. Even if it wouldn't last. If it might never happen again. But for that moment, I _saw_. I knew that it worked. I knew _how_ it worked."

She thinks again of standing on a darkening stage, letting the last note ring out, knowing in her heart that she has just given the best performance of her life. For an instant she has grasped something, and then let it go, releasing it into the air with the fading echoes of the song. It will never return to her again, or at least not in such measure. And soon even the memory will be gone.

The wave of applause, when it engulfs her, is still sweet.

"Having that moment," she says. "Maybe that's enough."

* * *

** Excerpt from _The Delani/Sonnabend Halls: an Introduction and Contextualization_ by Valentine Worth **

> Geoffrey Sonnabend's magnum opus, _Obliscence, Theories of Forgetting and the Problem of Matter, with Associated Applications_ , offers many points for speculation and debate, not the least of which is its enigmatic dedication: "For M.D." The brevity of this inscription is especially remarkable in contrast with the extensive detail of the work's contents, and Sonnabend's writing style in general, which has often been characterized as prolix. Many theories have been advanced as to the identity of this mysterious M.D., with one of the lesser-known candidates being Madalena Delani.
> 
> The construction of the Delani/Sonnabend Halls is in accordance with this theory, which we believe to be unduly overlooked. Delani and Sonnabend were contemporaries, and there is a distinct possibility that their paths crossed at the Iguazú Falls in 1936 — although accounts of that period are understandably overshadowed by Madalena Delani's dramatic car accident on the way to Montevideo (fortunately non-fatal, as she was seated in the back seat) and her ensuing period of convalescence.
> 
> There is no firm evidence that they met at any point in the years afterward, in the course of pursuing their respective long, storied careers. However, given the overall lack of definitive proof for any candidate, we hold that this theory has as much to recommend it as any other. 
> 
> Most of all, we feel that the mere possibility of that brief intersection, and the resonance of Delani and Sonnabend's stories, is sufficient to justify the juxtaposition of their lives and work within a single exhibit. After all, as amply demonstrated by a far more distinguished scholar than myself, the world is bound with secret knots. Perhaps this is one such.

**Author's Note:**

> I cannibalised a number of sources for this, including:
> 
>   * The Museum's biographies of [Madalena Delani](https://www.mjt.org/exhibits/delson/delani.html) and [Geoffrey Sonnabend](https://www.mjt.org/exhibits/delson/sonabend.html). (The Museum itself doesn't seem to spell their names consistently, which is part of the charm — the Delani-Deloni mixup is a nod to that.)
>   * Sonnabend's [theory](https://www.mjt.org/exhibits/delson/oblisci.html). The version presented in this story takes many liberties; hopefully that can be justified as being a much earlier and rougher version, with a somewhat different focus due to Delani's influence. (I'm sorry I cut off Sonnabend's musings about cones, but he definitely got to expound on the cones in painstaking detail when he wrote his book.)
>   * [Bees](https://www.mjt.org/exhibits/bees/bees.html) as muses and mourners.
>   * Bees and [Plato](https://www.infoplease.com/dictionary/brewers/plato-and-bees).
>   * The properties of [pins](https://www.mjt.org/exhibits/bees/pins.html).
>   * Sir "Not Actually Appearing in This Fic" [Athanasius Kircher](https://www.mjt.org/exhibits/kircher/magnes.html).
>   * Kircher really did have [thoughts about cones](https://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/halshs-00641624/document), though inaccurately relayed by Sonnabend in the story. (This is also the source of the title.)
> 



End file.
